This invention pertains to apparatus and methods for material handling, and especially for the palletizing and depalletizing of materials, and, optionally, the distribution of those materials to specific locations. The invention especially pertains to apparatus and processes for the handling of stacks of loose materials such as newspaper and loose sheets of paper, and the like, in conjunction with loading the materials onto a pallet and subsequently unloading the materials using a depalletizer, and optionally distributing them to a subsequent work station, and loading them into a hopper.
Apparatus for palletizing bundles of newspaper into a pallet load are known in the art. My U.S. Pat. No. 4,704,060, which issued from Ser. No. 770,268, filed 8-28-85, which is a continuation-in-part of application Ser. No. 746,997, filed June 19, 1985, now abandoned, incorporated herein by reference, teaches apparatus and methods for palletizing loose stacks of paper such as newspaper. To the inventor's knowledge, apparatus for unloading a pallet load of loose materials is unknown, as is unloading a pallet load by sliding the load off the pallet.
Palletizers have achieved substantial use for loading cases of material onto a pallet in layers typically with a slip sheet on the bottom of the load and tie sheets between the layers. In my U.S. Pat. No. 4,704,060 there is disclosed palletizing apparatus for loading layers of loose paper, such as stacks of newspaper, onto a pallet.
It is believed that the unloading of pallets, and particularly pallets of loosely stacked materials, is generally done by hand. The problem with handling loose materials with a pallet unloading apparatus is that each unit of material must be acted upon in some way, by the apparatus, to effect the desired movement. With the small thickness of, for example, paper, it is easy for sheets. Particularly those near the bottom of a stack, to be missed by that material handling apparatus which functions by action on a side of the stack, at the edges of the sheets. Yet, efficient material handling of thin sheets typically is done through interactions at the sheet edges.
Papers are conventionally taken manually from a pallet load and stacked into a hopper for further processing. Since removal of material from the pallet load and placing it in the hopper are manual operations, it would be desirable to provide apparatus to perform each of those operations, as well as apparatus to transport the material from the depalletizing apparatus to the hopper loading apparatus.
It is an object of this invention to provide apparatus and methods for automatically unloading material, and especially stacks of loose materials such as newspaper, from a pallet. In some embodiments, the most efficient unloading begins with a particular method of loading the pallet which is conducive to easy unloading.
Another object is provision of apparatus and process for distributing stacks of material to selected ones of a plurality of workstations.
Yet another object is provision of apparatus and process for loading stacks of paper into a hopper.
Finally, it is an object of the invention to provide a system of apparatus and process for depalletizing material, transporting it to a subsequent workstation, which may be selected from a plurality of workstations, and loading it into a hopper at the workstation.